he joins us now. bottom line, nothing's getting done. you could make an argument nothing getting done with $835 million of cuts that are better than no cuts is okay. what do you say? >> well, i mean it's going to be cuts. there's going to be 85 billion but it's not smart. both sides agreed. the president's idea, republicans went along with it, thought it was a good day. >> neil: they thought it wasn't going to happen. >> no one thought this would happen. the reason we're talking about drastic cuts, they're making them up. no, we made them drastic on both sides, drastic on defense and -- >> you say drastic, yes -- i'm not minimizing that but no one is cutting anything in the aggregate. >> right. >> it's slowing the rate of growth in some programs. i guess i'm wondering, not taking sides, if that causes a hullabaloo, what do we have to do to really cut? >> the reason it's causing this -- if there was flexibility built into the 85 billion. defense department decides where the cuts come from. there will be no problemz. >> neil: what about th